The Spinner, The Reaper, The Standard-Bearer, and Desolation are four long panels between the windows. The first two relate to Peace (Concordia) and the other two to War (Bellum).
The whole of the paintings by Puvis de Chavannes, having a surface measurement of more than two hundred square yards, were removed during a violent bombardment in the spring of 1918. Sappers belonging to the “camouflaging” section of the army, together with firemen from Paris, carefully detached the canvases with knives and rolled them up on cylinders.
Some of them adhered so tenaciously to the walls that it was found necessary to cut away a certain thickness of stone with chisels at the same time as the canvas.
The operation was entirely successful, all the paintings being intact, with the exception of a slight tear in the “War” panel caused by a shell splinter, prior to removal.
It is probably in the museum of Amiens that one best realises the evolution in the decorative art of Puvis de Chavannes, as nearly a quarter of a century separates the first paintings from the last.
